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By Yannis Farsaris. Published on www.artmag.gr, 26/03/2012 Vangelis Raptopoulos is one of the most important contemporary Greek prose writers, with 23 works to his name. Detailed information about the author and his work can be found on his blog. His latest book, entitled ‘The High Art of Failure’, was published a few days ago by Ikaros Publications. Vangelis Raptopoulos writes in the first person about the story behind his book: “The High Art of Failure” is a cross between a diary, an autobiography, a confessional essay, a chronicle, a report, documentary, testimony, travelogue, dictionary and panorama of the 2000s. Let us take the first version, to which we can easily add not only the above, but also many others: the diary. In this case, we are not dealing with a conventional form of it, but with the diary in a broader sense. A kind of ‘public’ diary.The diary, in the sense of a confessional essay, a spiritual self-portrait or autobiography of a writer who, as the living conscience of his generation and era, writes de facto public texts, even when these are private.Had Dostoevsky not already claimed it, I would have titled it ‘A Writer’s Diary’.***We are talking about a book that has, above all, a political and social dimension, through which we witness life in Greece changing towards the more nouveau riche and European, real or pretended, until it is ultimately led down the path of collapse.But, at the same time, we are also talking about the working diary of a writer who constantly reflects on his work, and above all on its relationship with the spirit of our times, whilst at the same time offering testimonies about his colleagues, from Tachtsis to Samarakis and Koumantareas, right down to the much younger generation.We are talking, in a manner of speaking, of a journalistic journey through the landscape of the last decade, and at the same time of highly personal material, which nevertheless constantly tends towards generalisation, since a writer’s reflection inevitably operates in precisely this way.***If I were asked who this book is aimed at, I would naturally overlook my peers or those older than me. And I would go straight to the much younger generation, to all those who essentially did not live through, or did not fully understand, the decade covered by *The High Art of Failure*.To the younger generation, then, this detailed diary or written documentary will provide the necessary keys to understanding what was happening, in a way entirely different from that of news journalism, precisely because of my personal obsessions, through which the events and people are filtered.And in any case, for those who were absent from the 2000s as well as those who were present, it will offer an intuitive insight, peculiarly penetrating, aiming not so much to recreate the era as to summarise something of its deepest core, always under the guise of the topical.

Evi Karkiti, Angelioforos tis Kyriakis, 25 March 2012 It is difficult to find solace within Émile Zola’s literary universe. Believing that the novelist must be a ‘neutral observer and experimenter’, the great French writer expressed the view that literature is a field in need of a rigorous, scientific method, evidently inspired by the scientific developments of his time. Thus he emerged as a leading exponent of naturalism, perhaps the most extreme version of the vast and diverse current of realism, which has gifted European literature with some of its classic masterpieces.Naturalism, having chosen to move, through neutral observation, so close to reality, was criticised for its depressing themes and the suffocating atmosphere of pessimism it created around every story. However, this does not mean that the neutral observer is not also perceptive. Indeed, Zola’s pages clearly capture the harsh reality of the era, the customs and major social problems, the economic impasse, and the multifaceted human drama. These themes lie at the heart of his great and widely read novels. Whilst almost his entire body of novels has been translated into Greek, his short stories and novellas remain virtually unknown to this day. The collection entitled ‘The Marquise’s Shoulders’, recently published in a translation by Phoebus Piombino, not only fills a significant gap but also reveals a different Zola to us: the stylist and master of the short form. With him, the reader begins a wander through a Paris where the lights have gone out and in every alleyway misery meets poverty, despair, and economic, social and moral destitution.  Life as it is: A family dresses up to take to the streets and beg on New Year’s Day, since on that day in Paris begging is tolerated and there is a small hope that the family’s little girl might get a toy. One winter’s day, the author observes the beauty of the snow-covered urban landscape, but also the change in the scene, with mud and dampness running everywhere as soon as the snow melts. A young woman drives her husband to distraction so she can live out her love affair with another man, but her desire proves shallow and fleeting. Two wild animals escape from the Paris Zoo, only to discover that there is no society more unjust and savage than that of humans. Zola’s world is heart-rending. Social injustice, starving, sick children, people who are worse than beasts, killing out of hatred rather than to feed themselves, husbands who love money more than their partner, who dies alone and helpless in a bed. However, nowhere is the human drama of survival portrayed more heart-rendingly than in the short story ‘Unemployment’, characteristic of the author’s method, which culminates in the relentless question posed by the unemployed man’s pale and emaciated daughter: ‘Why, pray, should we go hungry?’ Zola’s approach to the problem of unemployment could make a Marxist blush with rage, as the misery of unemployment strikes both employer and employee alike. Particularly noteworthy is the use of death in the novella ‘How They Die and How They Are Buried in France’, where death—a subject that always preoccupied Zola—becomes the means by which he observes and reveals the mentalities and facets of the society of his time. These short stories reach the reader through the work of a distinguished translator, such as Phoebus Piombino, who ensures an even fuller understanding of this aspect of Zola’s work, by providing extremely useful notes for each story individually. The chronology accompanying the edition brings together the author’s complete works.

The final talk this year at the Tools Of Change conference in Bologna, one day before the start of the 49th Children’s Book Fair, was about neither fancy apps nor cutting-edge technologies.Elizabeth Wood, a representative of Worldreader, a non-profit organisation, presented her vision for how books will reach schools in developing countries. By developing partnerships and securing donations from major organisations such as Amazon, Penguin and Random House, Worldreader has placed hundreds of e-readers (Amazon Kindles) in schools across Africa, which, via the GSM mobile network, receive free books in English as well as in the local language.Over 75,000 books have been distributed to 1,000 pupils, with the results already evident in their reading and English language learning. The pupils spend many hours reading, even outside school, whilst a pilot app for downloading and reading ebooks was also presented, which will work on the basic mobile phones that are widespread in these areas.Notably, Wood predicted that, in the same way that people in these regions moved straight to using mobile phones without going through the landline phase, so they will learn to read exclusively in digital form, without ever experiencing the printed book.

Just yesterday, some of the new children’s books due to be published this year arrived at our offices. Among them is *Goldilocks and Just One Bear* by Leigh Hodgkinson, which is already in bookshops. Leigh, an award-winning illustrator and animation director, lives in England and is married with a young daughter. In her spare time, she paints and designs various decorative items for her home and her daughter’s room, which she then posts on her blog, along with photographs and detailed instructions.Goldilocks, in this modern version as presented by Lee, was one of the first foreign books we decided to translate into Greek, and one of the most difficult! This is because much of the text in the original book consisted of handwritten notes by the illustrator herself. The truth is that we tried very hard to capture the style and character of Lee’s writing, but even so, the anxiety over whether we’d succeeded gnawed at us every day. Until Lee received copies of the Greek edition and wrote about her excitement on her blog! Our relief and joy were immense, as you can imagine.Lee has just received the Greek edition of the book.We all know that when Goldilocks turned the three bears’ house upside down, they said goodbye to her with great relief. But have you ever wondered what happened next? Years later, the little bear gets lost in the big city, and guess who she meets! A clever and funny sequel to a much-loved fairy tale, by an award-winning illustrator.